Miss Frost Solves A Cold Case: A Nocturne Falls Mystery (Jayne Frost, #1) by Kristen Painter

Miss Frost Solves A Cold Case: A Nocturne Falls Mystery by Kristen Painter

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


It’s silly how many works I’ve given 5 stars so far in 2018. I mean, it’s true that I had my first DNF last night, and probably won’t continue the other book that was on my currently reading list, and I’ve been better at just skipping books that were annoying me without DNF’ing them or finishing them but . . . still, my overall rating for this year is something probably close to 4.9 or something weird like that. 99.9% of this has little to do with this here book so let’s get to that.

See, I had thought out what I was going to write, and then I wrote the above first. Right, so. I’m a random reader. Occasionally I ‘know’ what I’ll read five books out, but most of the time I don’t know what I’m reading next. Also there’s random, and then there’s random. As in, there are books I figure I’d probably read very shortly (I’m including in here books I don’t even know exist, but are by authors I read everything they publish), then there are books I had no idea they existed before I just start reading. That’s where this book here falls. I just started to read. I was just going to sample the beginning to see how serious I should take this book. I mean, I’ve picked up a ton of free books lately that I’ve not even put on my list of books owned, and this was one of them. It was offered for free, it looked vaguely interesting – at least enough so to pass the low test for books I get free that I don’t acknowledge getting (in case I later want to read the book and now it’s something like 10 dollars, I’d rather get it for free if I can). So I was just doing a glimpse inside to see if I would even add the book to my owned pile and . . here we are, with the book all read and stuff.

Wow I ramble. You know, if I saw my own review written by a person I didn’t know on a random book I was looking at, there’s probably 99% chance I’d not read it. The review. Heh

So - story - This is a fantasy book and a fantasy world. Well, it’s set on earth, but by ‘fantasy world’, I mean, there’s no hiding who people are. It’s less ‘demons and stuff have come out of the closet’, and more ‘supernatural creatures are both the main point of view and main people inhabiting this book, and the humans don’t even know that the vampire they are taking a picture with is a real vampire’ type of ‘not hiding’.

The main character is Jayne Frost, and her father is Jack Frost who is otherwise known as the Winter King (and yes, Jayne is the Winter Princess). Jack Frost, even though he’s a king and stuff, works for someone else, mostly because he married a particular woman who just so happens to be the sister of Kris Kringle. So Jack is like Kris’s powerful right hand man, or something like that. Kris, of course, being Santa if that Kris Kringle thing isn’t widely known. Which means that Jayne herself is half . . . oops.

Jack Frost is an elf, a winter elf to be exact. It wasn’t exactly noted what the Kringle’s are, but whatever they are, Jayne Frost has both elf magic and Claus magic. She’s half-elf and half-….

Jayne has been floating around the company Santa and Jack run, she’s heir to the Winter Throne, but she hasn’t really found her place yet. She’s currently working on the Naughty/Nice list, but none of that is seen in the book, for the book opens with Jayne being called in to see her dad. He has a new assignment for her involving a specific special town in Georgia (USA, as opposed to the country known as Georgia).

Six employees have, over a two year period of time, just up and quit with just a note. And none of them have returned to the North Pole, and none of their whereabouts are known. So Jack’s sending in his daughter to investigate – undercover as the newest employee at the Santa’s Workshop (there’s a bunch of toy store’s all of the world that they run to test toys and stuff) in Nocturne Falls Georgia. And by undercover, I mean both an assumed name and a special magical bracelet that changes Jayne’s appearance (Jayne’s basically known to every Winter Elf, at least those who have spent any time in the North Pole).

Nocturne Falls itself is special, for, you see, while Santa’s Workshop celebrates Christmas 24/7 365 days a year, Nocturne Falls celebrates Halloween 24/7 365. Which is where the ‘hiding in plain sight’ comes in. As elves, vampires, various kinds of shifters can openly wander in this town, and people will just assume that the person with the pointy ears (elf or fae), or the fangs (vampire or shifter), or extra hairy, is just someone working for the town, not an actual elf, faerie, werewolf, or vampire.

So – that’s the situation. Jayne, under the cover name of ‘Lilibeth Holiday’ (Lilibeth is Jayne Frost’s actual middle name, and Holiday is one of the most common Winter Elf last names) is the newest employee of the Santa’s Workshop toy store in Nocturne Falls investigating the disappearance of six employees.

The book is much more of a mystery than a romance, though something of a modified love triangle does pop up. It’s not a real love triangle, for reasons, but I’m not sure if everyone in the story knows that. Jayne, as Lilibeth, ends up going on ‘just friends’ dates with a guy named Cooper, who is a Summer Elf (and Jayne’s actual long lost ex-boyfriend from college who broke her heart and stuff of that nature), while Lilibeth (Jayne) is also real dating a guy named Greyson (a vampire).

So, great story, good mystery, some romancing, lots of fantasy fun. Oh, and lots of humor sprinkled here and there. Oh! And a very cute cat named Spider. Spider is my favorite character in the book.

Rating: 4.70

January 30 2018



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